“I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out”

“I didn't feel strong. I felt like a big ball of wuss that wanted to curl up in my bed and never get out.”

“The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.”

“It is sheer hell in this house. I would have to be quite a writer to describe it properly. Anyhow, I sprang from the chaos and it is my business to pull myself out of it.”

“Anthony took the pipe out of his mouth and smiled at her. "Sorry, dear! You know I don't mean to get like this, but I can't help it. What you want me to tell you is what I'm thinking, but I can't, because I don't know. Now, now, that's not clever, it's purely a statement of fact. We've been married quite long enough for you to know me by this tim, but you never seem to have understood properly what a tidy mind I've got. That, you know, is really why I'm always getting mixed up in this 'finding-out' business. When I see a thing all unreasonable and all at loose ends, I just have to see whether I can't straighten it out, and it's the same with my own thinking. When my own thinking's just a mess, it isn't tidy, and therefore I won't let it release its untidiness onto the world. I have to get it nicely rearranged and sorted before I can really talk.”

“A hanging, though, was something different. I got to thinking. We hadn’t never been to nothing just to have a good time. A hanging was special and we was all getting to go.”